7
Jan 2022595
The municipal government
of Beijing slapped the 7-Eleven convenience store chain with an ominous warning
and roughly $23,500 in fines for violating Chinese Communist Party speech
codes, including such “errors” as the “wrongful act of assigning Taiwan province
as an independent country” and using Japanese names for disputed islands
claimed by China.
The fines were assessed
in December but not made public until a report by Nikkei Asia on Friday.
The roughly 260 7-Eleven
stores in Beijing are run by a unit of Japanese retail company Seven & i
Holdings. Beijing officials punished the company for referring to the “Senkaku
Islands” by their Japanese name on its website. The islands are administered by
Japan but claimed by China, which insists on calling them the “Diaoyu Islands.”
7-Eleven’s website
allegedly also included “mistakes” in its representation of the borders for the
Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, home of the brutally oppressed Uyghur
Muslims, and the Tibet Autonomous Region. According to the South China
Morning Post (SCMP), the “mistakes” in the Tibetan borders
involved territory disputed by China and India.
Delegates and lawmakers leave after the second plenary session of the National People’s Congress at the Great Hall of the People on March 8, 2021, in Beijing, China. (Photo by Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)
The Chinese Communist
Party is particularly sensitive about any reference to Taiwan as an independent
country. China frequently uses economic leverage to force foreign
companies to change verbal or visual references to Taiwan on their
websites that depict it as anything but a province of China. Taiwan is a
sovereign state with no political ties to the government of China.
China has also forced
foreign companies to change products that did not conform with Chinese
Communist ideology, notoriously including a T-shirt sold by
The Gap that showed an outline of China without depicting Taiwan and other
islands it claims.
Nikkei Asia quoted a
statement from Seven & i Holdings that “sincerely” accepted the punishment
from Beijing. The company promised to “do our best to prevent a recurrence.”
Chinese Foreign Ministry
spokesman Wang Wenbin addressed the 7-Eleven fine in a press conference
on Friday, although he claimed not to have been aware of the story until a
reporter brought it up.
“I would like to
reiterate that Taiwan is an inalienable part of China’s territory and the
one-China principle is a universally recognized norm in international relations
and the consensus of the international community,” Wang said.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/07/beijing-fines-7-eleven-for-calling-taiwan-a-country
https://www.independent.co.uk/asia/china/china-fines-7-eleven-taiwan-b1988625.html
No comments:
Post a Comment